Firefly and Dating...Conclusion

(continued from last post...)
As I widened my circle of friends this semester, it came up and hit me in the face that if I'm loving God and loving people, I'm headed for a strong clash with the position of "dating is bad". How could I love the people around me and yet condemn them for dating? The two things seem mutually exclusive, and I know which one is wrong. (Hint: If you say that loving people is a bad thing, you're wrong.)

My world was further disturbed by a question from one of the young ladies in my class. A young man in my class has a habit of starting random conversations, then leaving - "thought grenade"-like. Elliot was walking through the computer lab asking random questions. He passed me, and asked "So, Larson, how many girlfriends have you had?" Being a good homeschooler, I answered "Zero," and was obliged to add "I don't date." Seeing as I sorta picked the "fight", and seeing as I was doing homework with myself and two young ladies, I was thereby compelled to explain my statement. Since I've held the same opinion for several years, I have most of the basic tenets down. Stuff like "Serial dating sets a bad precedent for a lifelong marriage", and "constructing a false personality for a date is counter-productive; if you end up marrying them, they won't be marrying the person you've constructed."

After Elliot left, Andrea asked a simple question that took me aback. "So, when you meet someone that you feel might have marriage potential, are you going to date them?" Well, with the background that I've had, my reaction (as opposed to response) was going to be "Heck no." Then I realized that in the context of others, that answer would be inappropriate and hurtful. The more I thought about it, the less of a response I had, and so I never answered Andie's question.

It may seem predictable when I tell you that 2 weeks later, God told me I should ask Andie out. The first time He said it, I responded like any good "ex-homeschooler" - "No way!" It's not that Andie isn't a nice young lady, it's that I don't date. The only way that I can explain it is that God was insistent that I should ask her out. Because I'm a little slow on the uptake, I wanted to make sure. I sought counsel from a variety of sources because I was sure that someone would tell me that I was crazy. To my great surprise, nobody did.

In faith, I asked Andie over for dinner, then to a school concert. As I had seen before, God took a good thing and made it a great thing. Through a strange set of circumstances, we ended up at a friend's house hearing his cousin and cousin-in-law tell us about how God reached in and worked in their lives, a common thread for Andie and I in our conversations that week.

Without boring you to death, I will end with one more word picture. My life lately has been a walk in the dark. The path is strange to me, and I have no idea where it leads. Once in a while the lighning flashes and I am floored by God's love and wondrous plan. Then it goes dark again, and the trudge resumes. This semester in particular, I've seen the hand that God holds out to me. He holds out His hand to me both because He loves me and because He can see the path and wants to lead me down it. When my hand is firmly in His, I will not stumble, and if I do, He'll be there to help me up. One step at a time, He will lead me down His path. Around this path, before me, behind me, and around me, are people who can sometimes see my path better than I. Sometimes they cheer me on, and other times they caution me about obstacles in my way.

However, I have two hands. One is in God's hand. The other, however, is a different story. By the grace of God, Andie (Andrea) walks beside me, with her hand in God's and the other in mine (figuratively. OK, maybe sometimes literally). Neither of us are sure where the path leads, but both of us are sure that God has led us here.

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain! Worthy to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and glory! (from Handel's Messiah) God is so great, and the plans we make that seem so important are really dust to be blown away from His master plan.

Thank you for reading this torrent of words. I hope that it encourages you, wherever you are in life. Sometimes God asks us to do crazy things. If we step out in faith, He will meet us there and do incredible things. I would love to share some of the things He's done in my life, even when I was just considering this "dating thing." I would be happy to share, but in light of my current circumstances, I believe the message may be clouded. Therefore, I will wait for the opportune moment. (sorry, bad movie reference)

This torrent of words has lessened to a trickle, maybe even a rivulet, and will now cease. As always, thanks for reading and thinking. I ask that you keep me (and "us") in your prayers-that we would trust God completely and never stray from His perfect plan.

God Bless!

Firefly and Dating...Continued

(Editorial note: For length control purposes, this has been split into two posts...the 1000-word target gets a little elusive sometimes... Also, I apologize if this post is less polished than some others - since my life is a "moving target", my thoughts aren't very well sorted on this subject)

Continuing my trend from two posts ago, I would like to continue explaining how God has led me through evaluating my beliefs and discarding erroneous misconceptions.

Last time, I touched on the fact that my upbringing was pretty conservative. My parents have always backed me 100% in all that I do, a fact for which I am very thankful. Not by any fault of theirs, but because of the community in the church we attended through my early teenage years, there was very much a list of "unacceptable behaviours" that was quite extensive. An anecdote that I found humorous includes the (multiple) times some parent would call my father because I was talking to their daughter. In church. Yeah, I thought it was a little draconian as well, but such were not the rules that I nor my parents made. I could say more to illuminate the period views on guy-girl relationships, but I think that the edification value would decrease inversely proportionally to the amount that I said. (Sorry...my Mines-ness is coming through.)

One of the books often cited when invoking the policy of "courtship not dating" at that time was Joshua Harris's landmark book I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Mr. Harris stated very clearly at the beginning of his book that he was not out to prove dating wrong, but to offer a healthier alternative. He used an analogy that is very good and quite intuitive. We all have gone through the grocery store pushing a cart with a sticky wheel that swerves the cart off in a random direction once in a while. He compared dating with driving a "swerver" through a shop of shelves lined with china. If you're really careful, you can make it through without a big mess, but you have to be _really_ careful. He proposed that courtship was a better way to make it through the "china store." Some of the hallmarks of a courtship philosophy included an emphasis on not defrauding your interest (for lack of a better word-I'm trying to be gender-neutral), beginning a relationship with a clearly-stated intent (usually marriage), and complete (usually predetermined) parental consent on both sides.

Since Josh Harris uses a word picture, I would like to offer a few of my own. A picture is worth a thousand words, after all. Here was my perception of "how to meet a nice girl", maybe about the age of 18. You walked the path that God had for you. One day you looked up and noticed the girl that was perfect for you. You both knew it at first sight, and the rest was history, happily ever after and all that good stuff.

It was as if my peer group were at A - young and single. At C was engaged and so on. Between the two points were some obstacles. One way of viewing the obstacle was the demilitarized zone - turrets, landmines, and other such niceties. The problem with a DMZ between guys and gals was what one family realized - their son was 20 years old and purportedly had no idea how to talk to girls. Hmm...I wonder how this happens.

Another possibility that I picture is a river (or insert your favorite body of water). Like the river at the end of Pilgrim's journey in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the current and the width varied on who you were. It was implied that the water of guy-girl relationships was murky, and you were never sure quite where the bottom was. Granted, I know the current could be strong; I saw a couple people get swept away into bad places by not watching where they were going. BUT, you know, the water is also full of sharks and pirahnas and other such niceties. (Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!) It was verboten to enter the water. At all. Granted, some people made it to the other side without being swept away. There was two possibilities. You could be perfect and walk on the water. I'm thinking of a couple who supposedly did everything right, blah blah blah. I don't believe that much. The other way was to take a running leap and jump across. A couple people did that, too - apparently their river was narrower.

The end result is that we had pretty much no "B" in our journey from A to C. Granted, I know the dangers of following a "cookbook": remember I grew up in the ATI (Bill Gothard) program. I know how to do the 7-step list to anything. It seemed, though, that we should at least have a framework within which to work. Apparently, that wasn't to be the case, though.

Last Christmas (2005), God brought me through what I viewed as a dark place in my life. Although I knew the concept of "guarding my heart", I must admit that I was pretty much lousy at it. Especially in this case, I let my heart get far ahead of my mind and God's plan. I was abruptly smacked upside the head by the edge of God's path for me and spent a week working through why/how I had gone so wrong. I remember having several very energetic discussions (read: raised voice arguments) with a good friend of mine about why life had to be so dumb. Probably near the end of the spring 2006 semester, I finally realized that I needed to let it go and put it all in God's hands. I think my thoughts were along the lines of "This is stupid and I'm done. I don't care, I'm just done. If God has someone out there, He's going to have to make it really clear, because I am done looking." Turns out that life works a lot better when you don't worry about it.

This semester, God called me to focus much less on rules and much more on "Loving God and loving people." (I think I may have mentioned this before - it sounds familiar) Last time, I talked about how God called me to reevalute my previously held view that all TV was bad. Another set of views that I've been re-evaluating has been my position on dating. Because of what I had absorbed as I was "growing up", dating was a "bad thing", and boyfriend/girlfriend was most often used as almost a term of derision.

(to be continued...)

What Love the Father has Lavished On Us!

I've been struck the last few weeks by an old American folk hymn entitled "What Wondrous Love Is This". The Friday before Thanksgiving, some of us crazy physics majors were out slacklining (look it up on Wikipedia) between two trees on Kafadar Commons. I was sitting down putting my shoes back on after my feet had ceased to have feeling when I heard the bells in Guggenheim across the street ring. I enjoy the sound, but usually don't pay a lot of attention. This time, though, I recognized a tune that I had heard long ago. After much thought, I remembered it. I found a copy online, and was really touched by the lyrics. For your enjoyment, I'll share them with you.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this
That caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul!

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down
Beneath God’s righteous frown,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul for my soul,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul.

To God and to the Lamb I will sing, I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb,
Who is the great I AM,
While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing,
While millions join the theme, I will sing.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free
I’ll sing His love for me,
And through eternity I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,
And through eternity I’ll sing on.


I wish that I could share all the ways in which God has shown me His great and wondrous love in the last 2 months. When I was a mess, He straightened me out. When I couldn't see the path ahead, He held out His hand for me to hold. When I didn't know where to go, He showed me the next step to take.

God's love to me is so amazing. While a lot of specifics have slipped my mind, His hand has been on my life in great ways. From my friend who asked if God was all I talked about to my classmate who volunteered to bake cookies for every physics final, God's love shows through everywhere.

One specific recent example, then I'll have to stop. This morning was the Digital Circuits laboratory final. It was technically an open-note final - we were allowed all of our previous lab reports and one set of online lectures. I was slightly preoccupied with other things when I packed my backpack this morning, and assumed that our graded labs were in my backpack. Realize my near-panic when I pulled out my folder for this class and realized that I had no labs, no writeups, no nothing. On my walk down, I knew that I could recreate everything if I had to from the original engineering data sheets and my own memory. That is, until the professor proctoring the test pointed out that all the data sheets had been removed from the lab stations, "...so I hope that your writeups are well done." After much thinking, we appealed to the teacher to connect to my home computer where I was pretty sure that I had most of the labs. He allowed us to fetch them, but the default file association was to a program that couldn't display the pictures that were vital to our test success. We were about to admit defeat and buy a required datasheet (at the cost of 5 points off the top of our test) when my lab partner suggested using a different program. Thankfully, the all-important pictures opened fine, and 46 minutes after walking in the door, our circuit was functioning properly. After approximately another 45 minutes, our writing was done, and we were free men. As far as I could see, we aced it (100%), so that makes me very happy.

God shows up, and God is good! Now, it seems that I must write a post about dating. Sigh...what one must do to please one's friends. :-) Until next time...God Bless.

Firefly and Dating,or...well, yeah. Firefly and Dating

As I alluded to earlier, I've been holding onto this post for about 2 weeks now. I meant to go through it again and clean it up, but I decided that I'd rather just post what I have. Hopefully it makes more sense to you than it does to me. :-) God has me on a crazy intense road, but He's brought me this far, and He will lead me to the end. (Remember the last post?) For now, though, I'll return you to your regular unscheduled blog post.

While the TV series and the behavioral pattern may appear to have nothing in common, I pulled a lesson from each and both of them. Allow me this opportunity to share what I believe is God's heart as revealed to me.

At Fall Conference (the IVCF fall retreat, as you may recall), Jay Pathak (pastor of Arvada Vineyard Church) was speaking. Pastor Jay brought a powerful message about how Christians today focus on "being a Christian" and "doing the right things" rather than merely following Jesus as Jesus Himself commands. Time fails me now to explain all the implications that this has had in my life since. The main point that God keeps bringing is that life isn't about being good, or even about sharing your faith with others. It's about loving God first of all, then as a natural outgrowth of that, loving others.

Yeah, so Firefly. And dating. Yeah. About that...

Firefly is a science-fiction television series. It was aired on Fox for a short time, then cancelled. I had heard good things about it but hadn't seen it, mostly because I "don't watch TV." Why don't I watch TV? Because, as everybody knows, TV is bad and is a conduit for bad things. Right? Maybe.

And now onto dating. In the same way, "I don't date." (The quotation marks here are not for sarcasm, but rather because it is indeed an exact quote.) From the time I was young (not that I'm old now), I was raised on Bill Gothard, Josh Harris, and the like: Dating is a "Bad Thing", and courtship is the only "Good Thing." Is that a wrong teaching? I don't think so. It kept me on the strait path (and the straight path) for many critical years.

About 3 weeks ago, I had a chance to re-evaluate both of these paradigms at the same time. Remember the "Loving God and loving people" thing? As I thought, I attempted to assemble the pieces in different ways as you would a puzzle. Maybe this piece goes here, maybe that piece goes there. If they don't fit, you take them back out and try them somewhere else.

The Sunday evening after Fall Conference, I was over at my friend Nick's house, doing computer stuff. We were waiting for an operating system install (which can take over an hour of just waiting), and Nick asked if I wanted to watch a movie while we waited. I looked through his list of movies, and noticed that he had Serenity. One night last year, my roommates and I were going to watch Serenity (a movie based on Firefly), but ended up watching a lesser movie. I decided to seize my opportunity at Nick's house. Serenity is a good movie, and I enjoyed it. It was a good enough movie that I wanted to see the series. Nick offered to burn it onto DVD-R for me, but forgot in the ensuing time.

I was visiting with one of my classmates as we were working on a team project a couple weeks ago, and mentioned that I wanted to watch Firefly some time. She owns the series on DVD and offered to loan it to me, an offer that I quickly accepted. I started watching a couple days later, and quickly became enthralled - the series is well-written and well-executed. Then I realized that I was indeed "watching TV." Hmm...isn't this a "bad thing"? Well, does it say in the Bible that "TV is bad"? Not that I could find. The danger is the time drain and the potential to absorb corruption. In the first case, I am strongly restricting "Firefly time" to after homework and other important stuff. In the second, while containing some ideological issues (Is piracy acceptable in a nearly-lawless state?), Firefly also brings up interesting questions requring contemplation. As long as the positive outweighs the negative, I'm OK with it.

However, I had to be humble and admit to myself that I'm watching TV in a form, something that I have strongly condemned in the past. To say that watching TV is wrong is a legalistic point of view, and not how God calls me to be. It can be a bad thing, but it doesn't have to be.

And dating...well, that will have to wait for another post...Sorry. :-)

"...Until He comes, or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ, I'll stand..."